Identifying Gifted, Talented, or High Ability …

1 Identifying gifted , talented , or high Ability students from Low-Income Families Scott Peters, University of Wisconsin, Whitewater Marcia Gentry, Purdue Unviersity The topic of underrepresented students , typically those from African American, Native American, Hispanic, and low-income families, has gained attention in past years with it going as far as being the headline topic at a recent National Association for gifted Children Conference. However, much of the work in this area has focused on underrepresentation of youth from racial or ethnic groups, with less emphasis on students who are underrepresented because of their low socio-economic status.

2 Identification Despite advances in psychological assessment, family income remains one of the highest correlates with academic achievement (Rogers, 1996; Valencia & Suzuki, 2001). Even though factors other than income are possibly involved in this association ( , better access to high quality schools), coming from a low-income family remains a disadvantage with regard to school success (Valencia & Suzuki, 2001). students from low-income families also tend to be underrepresented in programs for the gifted and talented (Stambaugh, 2007; Swanson, 2006).

3 In the 2003 2004 school year, more than 40% of all students in American schools were eligible for the federal free and reduced lunch program (NCES, ) and yet only 28% of students achieving in the top quartile in first grade were from low-income families (Wyner, Bridgeland, Diiulio, 2007). The free and reduced lunch program provides school lunches to those students whose families come from the lowest two income brackets and has consistently been used as a gauge for economic standing and has even been criticized as being too exclusive, thereby leaving out a number of students from low-income families even when they suffer from many of the same problems as students who qualify (Viadero, 2006).

4 In the summary of findings from the National Leadership Conference on Low-Income Promising Learners, Stambaugh (2007) outlined several practices that could aid in the identification of students from low-income families for gifted and talented programs. These included beginning identification as early as kindergarten, followed with ongoing identification to locate students from low-income families who demonstrate gifted and talented behaviors in later grades in school. The author also suggested using teacher behavior checklists that have been shown to yield reliable and valid data on giftedness and talent specifically for students from low-income families.

5 Stambaugh also emphasized the importance of using more specific normative groups in assessment than have traditionally been used. Teacher rating scales, as with any other measure, should be used in conjunction with multiple assessments in order to provide a comprehensive view of a student. Finally, participants in the conference identified professional development and teacher training as important to ensure that educators know what behaviors to look for in students from low-income families who might benefit from programs for gifted and talented students .

6 Luckily, what is needed to better identify and program for gifted and talented students from low-income families is that same as what is needed for any underrepresented students . The use of an improper comparison group, or conversely the use of published test norms, has been suggested as one major reason that traditional standardized assessment tools fail to locate proportional numbers of certain groups (Lohman, 2006). Traditionally, all students within a given school are given the same test and their results are compared with published test norms.

7 In doing so administrators base their school s placement decisions on national or even international averages. Although certainly such a comparison is useful for gauging overall performance, it is not as useful in making placement decisions within the smaller context of a single school. Lohman (2006) gave the example of the 5% of American schools whose average achievement test score is around 95% when compared to the rest of the nation. In this setting, national norms do very little in telling an educator which students are in need of special services at an individual school.

8 However, when students in schools are compared to each other, educators are better suited to make decisions about instructional placement. In this case, the gifted and talented classes might involve only students in the top .5% when compared to national norms, but in the top 25% of the local school population. Lohman argued that the more specific the normative comparison group, the better. This is true for groupings such as income, race / ethnicity, as well as school or grade-level groups. Such a practice allows educators to see which students are achieving or have the potential to achieve given similar background and circumstances.

9 This idea of a school or district-specific comparison group should not stop at the local context. Instead, students should be compared to as similar students as possible. In the low-income context this means that students from low-income families should be compared academically to similar students . This allows the educator to see how well the student is performing relative to others who have had similar experiences and come from a similar background. Instead, typically students from low-income families have their test scores or teacher ratings compared with those from students from high -income families.

10 Such a practice will never result in proportional representation by low-income students because the group to which they are compared has had years of enriched experiences. A second example may help illustrate this issue. Take, for example, the Mark Twain story of the Prince and the Pauper where twins are born but separated at birth. One was raised in wealth while the other in extreme poverty. Because of the extreme differences in their upbringing, it is highly unlikely that the child raised in poverty will perform at the same level as his or her sibling, despite identical parentage.